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She finally cocks her head and asks, “Do you ever regret doing that to him?”

I ponder how honest to be I decide I need full transparency “I regret that it cost us our friendship What I don’t regret is that I broke them up That bitch would have destroyed Liam, whether he wanted to admit it or not”

“I see,” she says, looking at the fire

I let the silence take us away, giving her time to understand my side of the story

She finally glances back at me with a new question “For curiosity’s sake, whatever happened to Sophia?”

I grabstick that always stays nearat the fire, readjusting the burning wood “I hadn’t seen her in a really long tio, I represented out of town clients, and I actually ran into her in the courtrooht up for a couple h twoon her fourth e now”

Mallory’s brows shoot up “She told you her ex-husbands were multi-millionaires and billionaires? Like used those words?”

I give a firm nod “That’s the type of woman she is She’s not with any of them for love, it’s all for money, and one of those ex-husbands could have been Liam”

Mallory sips her wine, regarding uy that could be blindsided by anything”

“That’s because you know hiently “Back then, he was soft, where I was hard He was a dreamer and a romantic”

“And you weren’t?”

I shake my head “I saw Sophia for who she was”

Mallory pauses, absorbing a story I never thought I’d tell anyone else The trees rustle around us, the slight, war across ive you once you explained yourself?”

“To be honest, I wasn’t thinking that far ahead,” I admit, which is where the twenty-two-year-old version of“All I kneas I had to stop hi”

“Hmm…” She hesitates to sip her wine, frowns, then asks, “If you could go back in tis differently?”